Min-Max Guide / Optimal Play

[Squigglyruth]

Sorry, I still don't see how that would happen. 30 000g for the strawberry seeds, plus 42 500g for the bus, plus however much time/money necessary for 38 quality sprinklers? All in hand by Spring 16th, losing at least 8 hours to attend the egg festival? Does the extra income from river fishing in the rainy days you need for the 200 parsnips really allow that? What grade of pickaxe do you have by then? Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe I just suck at the game. Either way, I would love to see that caught on tape, I am genuinely interested in seeing that.

Honestly this is quite doable. Having started my run (I am on day 5), it should be easy for me on Riverland Farm with the fish smoker. Which I think means it's trivial for people with better fishing skills, and doable for most players.

I have never tried filming my play, but would be willing to give that a go next time through. It won't make fun min-max viewing: I don't use any of those techniques. I don't even normally bother pausing when collecting the wood from cutting a tree. There are many tricks that I am missing. I have never clay farmed! (I am tempted to put on legacy randomisation and see how easy that makes things if I clay farm on day 1).

I do have very very many hours in the game, and have played Spring over and over in the past. I have suggested and completed many min-max challenges and posted about them in the forums. I managed to get the beach farm cleared and planted with Starfruit with sprinklers and agriculturalist by Summer 4 on my second attempt, using this strategy. I don't use any mods except UI Info Suite.

I still stand by using parsnips early on - I have posted about this elsewhere. They are the best return on money invested into farming in early spring Y1. The return is worth the time if you balance how many parsnips you plant. 200 x 2 is optimal in order to have quality sprinklers for strawberries.

The possible reason for that was your fishing spot. Take a look at the attached image: fishing to the south on any of the two tiles marked with X (or any to the left of the leftmost one) guarantees fishing zone 5 after fishing level 4 with max casts. Did you fish in any of these spots? If so, you should have gotten way more catfish than you did. Or just fish in the forest, which allegedly has a tiny bit higher chance of hooking catfish.

It was weird. I normally get plenty of Catfish on Day 3, and I was getting fewer even though I had bought the bait. I didn't fish at those exact spots - that's good info, thank you!

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Fishing day 2-4 is fine. But once you get the access to the mine, it's better if you do void spirit+diamond farming than fishing. The money you get from void essence + diamonds is most likely more than the money you get by fishing (unless you get godlike RNG with the treasure chests). In addition to that, the combat exp is critical to unlock the explosive ammo recipe. Explosive ammo is really good for skull cavern dives.

Honestly with the buffs to fishing, especially for someone who isn't going to be maximizing time and pause buffering over hours for perfect days, it'll probably eek out diamond/void farming

The number of plantable tiles on the base farm is ~3000, which would make around 2 * 2750 * 3000 = 16M per month, which could match the 50M goal.

You can only plant starfruit in summer, ideally you're getting ginger island as fast as possible and utilizing it for as many weeks as possible, including the greenhouse it's about 800 tiles, though you can make this go further by using pots all over the island west map, drs and pots are very clay heavy though. You might also struggle planting, fertilizing, and watering all 3k starfruit day 2 without use of pretty advanced pause buffering (this is where I recommend agriculturist as it buys a couple days of leeway).

- Craft A LOT of regular sprinklers and/or iridium ones

You have the option of resetting for rain totem treasure rooms, at least early or for gi if you don't want to go all out on drs for pots
Batteries are probably better spent on crystalariums though that really depends on your skill in sc or how good you are at pause buffering, you may just consider radioactive ore farming if you're decent at the latter, it can pull a million plus a day but that obviously requires some practice.

The number of plantable tiles on the base farm is ~3000, which would make around 2 * 2750 * 3000 = 16M per month, which could match the 50M goal.
However, is it even possible to:
- Craft and place 3K kegs ? If not, then the profitability will sink.
- Hoe 3K tiles and water them (which would need around 330 regular spirnklers ...)

How much can you earn on a typical SC run ? Is it more than what is required to buy all the necessary starfruits and equipments ?

Honestly much of this is a matter of skill and something you'd learn from experience, I would really recommend taking on something easier than what's effectively a 50 mil year one money challenge then having some more experience to boot if you want to pursue it. Try a 10 or 20 million g run or try getting perfection in year 2 spring/summer which grants some leeway to avoid using solely money.

I saw someone mentionning that they were trying to complete perfection run as early as summer Y1, and I also wonder how this could be possible.

That was me, I plan on using casino strats which is just feature abuse which has been patched in the latest versions of the game, that was simply for theorizing a potential earliest date (by a human)

 

[Shart]

Honestly with the buffs to fishing, especially for someone who isn't going to be maximizing time and pause buffering over hours for perfect days, it'll probably eek out diamond/void farming

I assume the fishing buff you're talking about is the fish smoker. Unless you play in riverland farm, I still think void+diamond is better than fishing. The fish smoker recipe itself is already 10k which is quite massive in the early game and you still need to fish for the cave jelly after you have the access to the mine. Not to mention the combat exp you get from the void spirits.
But yeah, if you're not pause buffering, fishing is definitely better. Also, fishing is by far much more fun than spamming elevator in the mine.

Try a 10 or 20 million g run or try getting perfection in year 2 spring/summer which grants some leeway to avoid using solely money.

Completely agree with you here. No waiver perfection in late spring/early summer year 2 is a decent and fun challenge for anyone who's new at minmax.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

I assume the fishing buff you're talking about is the fish smoker. Unless you play in riverland farm, I still think void+diamond is better than fishing. The fish smoker recipe itself is already 10k which is quite massive in the early game and you still need to fish for the cave jelly after you have the access to the mine. Not to mention the combat exp you get from the void spirits.
But yeah, if you're not pause buffering, fishing is definitely better. Also, fishing is by far much more fun than spamming elevator in the mine.


Completely agree with you here. No waiver perfection in late spring/early summer year 2 is a decent and fun challenge for anyone who's new at minmax.

Void/diamond will be better yeah I’m just judging overall skill/experience because this guide in general is a very beginner one (5 mil total year 1 or something).

 

[susb8383]

I'm just trying this max/min guide for the first time, although I've restarted a few times because I missed deadlines.

The hardest part for me is:
1. getting enough money to unlock the vault early
2. getting irid in SC with my puny level 5 combat before dying.

The best I've been able to do in the highest luck day is 62 irid without dying. But I still don't have nearly enough to buy my first batch of starfruit to get me to level 10 farming. I will try the tip in a previous post of using gold ore in the master slingshot so maybe that will make a difference.

Also I do have a tip that I don't see mentioned above (but there are a lot of posts so sorry if I missed it). This is new with 1.6:
Sometime before you reach level 6 fishing make sure you get an extra 300 pieces of wood and repair the bridge at the beach. This is so that you can get 3 coral and 1 urchin. Then when you get an extra 3 bars of iron, make sure to craft the targeted bait maker.

Having this means that you can keep fishing only catfish on rainy days or only large mouth bass on sunny days, increasing your profit tremendously. It's totally worth the extra time going to the beach and cutting down extra trees.

A correction to the guide: where is says that you have to buy seeds from the Oasis a day early because Pam will be unavailable to drive; no longer true. You can drive yourself now when Pam is slacking off. Also the guide says that you can't buy seeds on luau day; also not true. The Oasis is open during the luau.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

Hey just want to point out that the Secret Woods is better for profit when it's raining than both the Beach in Summer and the Forest River in Spring, if and only if you're at fishing level 10, and you have a 75%+ catch rate for Catfish (which isn't too hard at all at fishing level 10)

I found that out theoretically when calculating the math and have since proven it to my own satisfaction experimentally. It's mainly due to the lack of Algae / Seaweed, you do occasionally get those annoying hanging plants but you just trash them when you catch them, they're not that common. Note that at fishing 9 it's much, much worse than those two, you need 10 via buffs or au natural for it to be the superior fishing spot. Just wanted to toss it out there :-)

 

[susb8383]

My run was going great until I discovered a way to totally brick it, and that is by forgetting to sell enough the day before the Flower Dance to buy the rarecrow and the recipe for Tub of Flowers. Year 2 I knew I needed to go but forgot to sell stuff the night before. Now I'm back to square one.

Also my strategy for leveling up quickly in fishing is to make sure I repair the bridge at the beach early and get 3 corals and a sea urchin before fishing level 6. Then I buy enough iron ore for 3 extra bars and craft the targeted bait maker.

I make bullhead bait, not largemouth bass bait, because it's much easier to get a perfect catch with bullheads. The sell price for a gold largemouth (which is what i usually catch) and an iridium bullhead is the same, but for the perfect bullhead catch you get 2.4x the xp. Also bullhead is there all night but largemouth stops at 7. Once I get level 10 fishing I use largemouth bait. On rainy days I make catfish bait, of course.

 

[susb8383]

One other deviation I've decided to do is get strawberry seeds from the egg festival so I can give loved gifts to Demetrius. I hope he'll send me a nautilus shell in the mail so I can get to Ginger Island before winter.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Year 2 I knew I needed to go but forgot to sell stuff the night before.

You can just as easily buy it the next year. If you want to do two year perfection, unless you're vehemently against it, the perfection waivers still exist and you would only need to buy a single one

This guide however doesn't really extend to perfection, so those things don't really matter unless you have some sort of time limit and rule set on a perfection run. If you don't they don't matter at all.

 

[susb8383]

I have a goal in mind which is to beat my husband's record for perfection, lol. Without waivers and without paying the parrot for the golden coconuts he got perfection by Winter 13.

 

[susb8383]

I found another thing from the guide that is out of date, a little. It says that the beach is the most profitable place to fish in the summer, rain or shine. Not quite true anymore with 1.6 as long as you have the targeted bait maker. Sturgeon have the second highest profit of the normal fish second only to super cukes (I'm excluding the ones that don't bite frequently even with targeted bait like the mine fish). They have the same profit as catfish and pufferfish but are available for more of the day than puffers and are not weather-dependent like catfish.

So to squeeze the most fishing money I start at the lake for sturgeon until close to 6, then get to the beach as quickly as possible and fish for super cukes.

Love that targeted bait maker!

 

[susb8383]

Well I think I bricked my attempt again. Forgot to save a regular melon for the CC. I did save my five quality melons but not a regular one. Sheesh. Maybe I should just give up and sell out to JojaMart.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Well I think I bricked my attempt again. Forgot to save a regular melon for the CC. I did save my five quality melons but not a regular one. Sheesh. Maybe I should just give up and sell out to JojaMart.

Check your file to see if any are sold by the cart, may be your saving grace

 

[Jianadaren1]

Guide question:

Summer 1

• Nothing notable on this day. Can do a Skull Cavern run, etc. Don't scythe any of the Parsnips since we do not need to plant any Starfruit Seeds until tomorrow. (This is because the Agriculturist profession will affect the third batch of Starfruit.)

Is there any advantage to planting Summer 2 vs Summer 1? If you were to plant a day earlier, that would enable you to respec to Artisan 8 days sooner.

Also minor guide update or error:

Summer 10
Buy the second batch of Starfruit Seeds. (We have to buy them today because the Oasis is closed tomorrow for the Luau.)

The Oasis is actually open on Summer 11 notwithstanding the Luau.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Is there any advantage to planting Summer 2 vs Summer 1? If you were to plant a day earlier, that would enable you to respec to Artisan 8 days sooner.

It's been forever since I actually looked at all into the specifics of this guide but it's most likely because it doesn't matter, or because you to the tilling in the first day, breaking up the planting. Swapping back to artisan faster shouldn't really matter as your profit shouldn't be centered around artisanal good just yet, and you'll still get the cash injection in time for major purchases.

 

[Maboi]

It's me again, with a number of questions:

1) Is burglar's ring worth it? Why? Why not? I could either farm dust sprites/iron, shadow brutes/diamonds or hit SC (Spring 13, CC run).
2) @FilthyGorilla you mentioned that you pre-stack ~100 bombs for Spring 15 for good descent (Egg rate +55 etc) but what about Spring 16? Surely you must be far lower on resources then.
3) Food. I'm sure many of you'll agree that bait maker is the strategy but it has one big downside: fewer chubs to eat. This means fitting a trip to the Salloon, most likely on a tool-upgrade/seed-buying day. This is doable but if we combine it with SC runs during the Desert Festival and the "Food is half as effective" debuff, it is very likely we'll run out of food. Here's an example of my 1st (sub-optimal) SC run on Spring 15:

-started with 30 salads and 5 cactus fruit, left with 6 life elixirs (got a total of 7 thanks to treasure rooms) and no other source of health, reached Egg rating 55, floor ~140

for clarity, I didn't use animation cancelling or legacy RNG

 

[Jianadaren1]

It's me again, with a number of questions:

1) Is burglar's ring worth it? Why? Why not? I could either farm dust sprites/iron, shadow brutes/diamonds or hit SC (Spring 13, CC run).
2) @FilthyGorilla you mentioned that you pre-stack ~100 bombs for Spring 15 for good descent (Egg rate +55 etc) but what about Spring 16? Surely you must be far lower on resources then.
3) Food. I'm sure many of you'll agree that bait maker is the strategy but it has one big downside: fewer chubs to eat. This means fitting a trip to the Salloon, most likely on a tool-upgrade/seed-buying day. This is doable but if we combine it with SC runs during the Desert Festival and the "Food is half as effective" debuff, it is very likely we'll run out of food. Here's an example of my 1st (sub-optimal) SC run on Spring 15:

-started with 30 salads and 5 cactus fruit, left with 6 life elixirs (got a total of 7 thanks to treasure rooms) and no other source of health, reached Egg rating 55, floor ~140

for clarity, I didn't use animation cancelling or legacy RNG

1) there's a discussion ITT re: Burglar's ring~ pages 6-8: https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/min-max-guide-optimal-play.4070/page-6

 

[FilthyGorilla]

1) Is burglar's ring worth it? Why? Why not? I could either farm dust sprites/iron, shadow brutes/diamonds or hit SC (Spring 13, CC run).

It can be, generally for a very easy/workkable minmax route like this you can totally go for it, so long as you're able to get it out of the way early. You'll be using the coal in a multitude of ways so as long as you don't drag it out it's killing two birds with one stone

2) @FilthyGorilla you mentioned that you pre-stack ~100 bombs for Spring 15 for good descent (Egg rate +55 etc) but what about Spring 16? Surely you must be far lower on resources then.

I'm not using all of the bombs, and they almost self sustain if you focus some iron nodes as you go. On the second day you'll also have a magic rock candy which will make it a far better run than the first day

3) Food. I'm sure many of you'll agree that bait maker is the strategy but it has one big downside: fewer chubs to eat. This means fitting a trip to the Salloon, most likely on a tool-upgrade/seed-buying day. This is doable but if we combine it with SC runs during the Desert Festival and the "Food is half as effective" debuff, it is very likely we'll run out of food. Here's an example of my 1st (sub-optimal) SC run on Spring 15:

Just buy salads, cash isn't really an issue and it's not like you need that much food. You can always reset the day (calico statues change upon reload) and try for better spread of buffs from them

 

[Maboi]

It can be, generally for a very easy/workkable minmax route like this you can totally go for it, so long as you're able to get it out of the way early.

Thank you. During my current run (my best so far) I was able to unlock the bus on Spring 10 (so technically Spring 11 could be an SC run) but the worst in-game luck actually should help me farm dust sprites now. To get money faster than with typical (no targeted bait) fishing or elevator farming (dark essences and diamonds) I farmed ONLY diamonds from 3pm to 2am on Spring 9 (this was the earliest I reached floor 115). It was a very long and mostly boring day but I also managed to gather 30 diamonds this way, and my mining level skyrocketed to 8.

Next day I spent some time on diamond farming, then sold most of my diamonds (got to 40, left 4 for 1st SC run) and bought some salads and bus repair from Joja.

Just buy salads, cash isn't really an issue and it's not like you need that much food.

My problem is that buying during the festival is not a thing if you want to utilise the event, while buying before bears an additional opportunity cost. When should you do it? Technically speaking buying it once is better than doing it twice unless you can combine it with something else/make it less of a drag. There're several events that can accompany buying salads, such as:
1) buying the 1st batch of kale
2) buying the 2nd pack upgrade (IMO, right after getting lvl 10 mining/selling iridium bars)
3) (optional) a tool upgrade
4) (optional)selling weapons and boots
5) (optional) unlocking minecarts (joja way)

Most of those are available since 9am whereas salads can be bought no sooner than 12pm. You can also farm anything in the mines and then go to the saloon before 12am.

I'd advocate for buying a single batch of salads (how many? I can't tell, but 30 I bought the other day seems too few) before the period of early SC runs or during a bad luck day before Spring 15 (these two will likely overlap) as the purchase seems a bit similar to farming coal/burglar's ring/iron to me: it gives you sort of freedom, a headstart that lets you utilise a series of SC run days better.

I'm not using all of the bombs, and they almost self sustain if you focus some iron nodes as you go.

That settles it, then. Thank you for your response :)

ETA: What are your thoughts on using Magic Rock Candy during the Desert Festival? Is it better to keep the boost for later or is stacking it with the (already high) bonus from the chef's dish at the beginning of an SC run a better idea?